TREE OF SAWS
a poem cycle
by Lee Patton

ABALONE LIMIT

We stroll just inland from Glass Beach 
through the portal-like  passage 
where the logging road bridge
was dismantled–just the sky overhead 
now, not log-laden, honking trucks.
Our next-door neighbor honks at us.
He shows off abalone shells arrayed
across his wetsuit, splayed on his pickup’s
seat like a flattened passenger.
“Got my limit. I’ll take these home 
and give a couple to your folks.”

As he sputters away, my head’s as full
of hungry memory as our back porch sink
when my brother came home shivering
from diving near the old dump’s
cove.  Loaded with his limit,
he’d dunk the squirming mollusks
into the basin, their single-muscle
selves stuck to the smooth porcelain
as if still clinging to their tidal life,
clueless that our back sink was only
a holding tank, a prelude to slaughter,
that my father was about to flatten
their flesh with a tenderizing hammer.

Tree of Saws will continue
it’s publication run through May 1st.

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